A family has been reunited with its dog more than a decade after it went missing after the dog was found in rural California earlier this month.
In a Facebook post on Friday, the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said that it received a call on February 10 that a dog had been "dropped off on a rural property" outside of Stockton, California.
According to SJCSO, Animal Services Officer Brandon Levin responded to the scene, where he found a dog that was "old and unwell."
Levin scanned the dog for a tracking chip and found that the dog, Zoey, had been reported missing in Lafayette, California, in 2010. Stockton is located more than 50 miles east of Lafayette.
Zoey's owners had since moved to another town in California but had luckily kept the same phone number listed on the microchip.
Zoey's owner, identified by the SJCSO as Michelle, was stunned when she got a call that her dog had been found. In fact, the SJCSO says that the company that keeps microchip records had listed Zoey as "deceased" since 2015.
"I'm still in shock. I definitely didn't expect this to ever happen, so I'm really excited," Michelle told the SJCSO.
Michelle added that her family had adopted Zoey from the pound and had her for about six months before she went missing in 2010.
"We went to the store for about 20 minutes and came back, and she was missing," Michelle told the SJCSO.
Zoey returned home with Michelle, where the animal share the home with the family's other dog, which is also 13 years old.
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